Ray Bradbury, one of America's best-known science fiction writers, has died at the age of 91.

Bradbury is perhaps most remembered for his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, about a futuristic society where book burning is an official policy. Inspired by the Cold War, the rise of television and Bradbury's love of books, the novel was made into a movie in 1966.

Fahrenheit 451 is often described as a story about the evils of censorship, but Bradbury said it was really about television destroying people's interest in literature.

In all, Bradbury wrote more than 30 books and nearly 600 short stories across his decades-long career, as well as poems, plays and screenplays.

His 1950 novel The Martian Chronicles, about human attempts to colonize Mars, brought him fame internationally and has been published in more than 30 languages.